Ingram to Erase and Rebuild Author Info

What Ingram Content Group calls the “Contributor” section of its database (usually authors and illustrators for books and artists for CDs) has, as some of us know, gotten a bit twisted lately, producing some rather hilarious results. So as of tonight, that section of the database is going to be wiped clean and reconstructed.

In an email to accounts today, the company said,

…Over the past several months Ingram has received substantial feedback from authors, publishers, librarians and booksellers on the quality of our contributor biographies, often that these narratives described a different person with the same name. These quality issues can be attributed to several root causes, including the substantial volume of contributors in our database and competing contributor data sources.

To correct this, we are taking a ‘clean slate’ approach and wiping out our contributor biography database. During the next several months we will rebuild this database with publisher metadata and authority metadata from several trusted sources, including internal data. You will notice more and more contributor biography information being populated during the coming weeks…

It’s important to note that the author information on the back cover blurb will continue to appear in the product description.

Usually the categories section can help you confirm that you’ve got the right book, or of course you can use a third-party site to verify author information.

NOTE: This trade blog is for Christian bookstore owners, Christian publishers and record labels, and nationally distributed Christian authors and musicians.

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